


Perchance to Dream

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Hellraiser (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Chains, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Vaginal Fingering, Wet Dream, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28375938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: She's dodged the fate of those who opened the box too many times.  Sooner or later it is going to come around and catch up to her.  He will be waiting for her.And the worst part of it is, somehow, deep down, she might be twisted enough to want it.
Relationships: Kirsty Cotton/Pinhead
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17
Collections: Holiday Horror 2020





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/gifts).



Somehow, it was always going to end like this.

In the darkness, smell of charred meat, decayed flowers, oiled metal assaulting her nose. That was the first sensation, the scent. Before her eyes adjusted to the darkness, or the distant, echoing wails reached her ears, or the taste of copper on her tongue.

Each of those sensations slowly faded in, the smell of sweetened decay, the sight of drab, dark stone that she could barely make dark stains out on, those _screams_ , and the warmth and taste of blood on her tongue. 

Something dripped _up_ , landing on a wet pool on the stone ceiling; the wetness glistening in the dim firelight. Another droplet splattered onto the puddle. The puddle on the floor, not the ceiling. It took her too long to come to that realization, staring at the puddle of her own blood, her view framed by her hair reaching down towards the floor, matted together by something wet.

She was upside down.

And with that realization, suddenly came the pain.

She screamed, or tried to, and settled in on wailing between clenched teeth when that was too painful, when she felt something _rip_ when she opened her mouth to wail. Somehow above her own cries, she heard the dripping of the blood increase in tempo.

Her entire body was shrieking in agony. 

She wanted to keep her eyes shut, keep them closed and wait for all the blood to run out and to lose consciousness and for everything to be over. But she knew in the back of her head that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t. The end must’ve already come, somehow. Some way—she couldn’t remember how—not that there was any way she could focus on remembering.

She died and was in Hell.

And that meant…

She languished there, upside down, for what felt like an eternity. Everything hurt; a light breeze from behind her flared into burning pain against flayed skin and raw nerves. Worse was the sense of _pulling_ at her wrists and feet, tearing at her bones. She didn’t even want to know, didn’t want to open her eyes and look up.

But she couldn’t wait forever, cringing in the darkness. Hearing screams far away, wanting to join in but unable to pen her mouth. Her tongue was stuck, she could only move the tip through the coppery mess in her mouth, trying anything more and the pain would flare up. Something _solid_ was pinning her tongue to the bottom of her mouth, and as best as she could, it was part of _some_ hardware holding her jaws closed.

They nailed her mouth shut.

That realization made her shriek silently to herself. She thrashed a little, feeling the tug at her wrists and feet, and her shriek became audible. She actually managed to open her mouth enough that blood drained out, dribbling down her face and adding to the spreading pool.

She regained… composure, or ran out of energy to fight against the pain, or got used to it. Eventually she stopped. She swallowed and opened her eyes again.

Against the black stone walls and dim lighting, her body—pale, exsanguinated—may have well have been bathed in a spotlight. Piercings and chains at her breasts and running all the way up, linking to a piercing _lower_. That was… not unexpected. The gouges and swaths of red across her legs and belly.

The hook running through her feet, the source of her being hung upside-down… she tried to kick and shriek while some distant part of her asked _what did you expect_? Her feet twisted on the hook—but aside from increasing the red running down her body, she accomplished nothing in her struggles except introducing even more pain. Panicked attempts to extricate herself gave way to agonized thrashing.

And eventually that gave way to fatigue? Acceptance?

When she looked to her left, seeing a similar hook through her forearm, stretching the arm to the wall, she barely had any reaction left. Just a choked sob. She didn’t even need to look at the right to know that arm was being dragged the same way.

“Kirsty.”

She shuddered at that, pain flaring up across her ruined flesh. She shut her eyes again, keeping them closed as she could feel him drifting closer. Even with her eyes closed, she could hear measured footfalls against the stone floor, wet with her blood. Countless little wounds blazed as he appraised them, like salt had been poured on them. Chains _tightened,_ pulling her limbs further, and those piercings at her breast and between her legs were tugged. She _shrieked._

“How long has it been?” He asked, in a measured tone. As if this was an average day for him. Of course it was. Chains rattled; the hooks on her wrists slacked and the limbs fell to the floor, only for a moment. She felt she was being pulled _up_ , her legs twitching involuntarily against the hook. “Kristy.”

Again, she didn’t want to open her eyes. And again, eventually she gave in. She tried to turn her head, look away from him, only for him to grip _something_ attached to her face and firmly force her to look at him. She didn’t have any strength left to resist his effort. At best all she could do was avert her eyes, look to the side, study that pattern of lines and nails running across his head, the patches of skin on his chest not covered by the leather sewn against it. 

Do anything but look him in the eyes.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had to wait _this_ long.” He mused. He ran his hands along her lips. “Even then, we’re going to have to wait to really hear you scream.”

She huffed and wailed against her teeth. 

“You’ve managed to talk your way out of this for too long, Kirsty.” He chided? It had been years since she first found that box, years since she first laid her eyes on him. And somehow she’d always managed to escape. Convincing them that Frank Cotton had escaped, convincing them to help her. She’d managed to talk her way out of their clutches.

Out of his clutches.

“I wonder… did you ever entertain the thought that you were Stingy Jack?” He said, pleased with himself, she assumed. There was impossible clarify in his words, the sound of his tongue and lips moving and him speaking. “Fool and lie and delay long enough and you wouldn’t be welcome here? That’s simply a story.”

Suddenly she was on the floor; withing on the stone and twitching, curling up. A dozen semi-clotted wounds were torn open again as she withered and shuddered. And then he was on top of her, and in her flailing she screwed up and looked at his eyes. 

She went very still.

“You’ve always been welcome here.” Fingers roughly traced the lines of lacerations down, from her left check , across her throat, to her right breast. He stroked metal, and then _tugged_. “You _belong_ here.”

She managed nothing more than a pitiful gasp.

His hands traced the length of the chain, all the way down, past her belly. There was a glint at the eye, something painfully clear. _Want_. He roughly fingered the mess between her legs, and, somewhere underneath the raging agony, she managed to catch. “You belong to us.”

She whimpered and whined and shuddered in pain and something else. He’d have planned this, everything, in advance. Maybe from the first time that she opened the box. She thought she was at her limit when she woke up, and steadily things became more and more painful, nerves were worked raw—and then there was something underneath, buried but evident.

She clenched her teeth hard around the metal in her mouth and tried to stifle a whine. She had to wonder if all of this was normal, just him doing his business. Or, if this attention, all of it was because of how long he had waited.

Most people who wound up here hadn’t been playing hard-to-get. 

“You belong to _me._ ”

He was beyond skillful. Things faded. The sound of his baritone. The smell of flesh and leather and blood and fire. The sight of that pale face, covered in nails. Soon there was nothing she could pick out, nothing she could sense but pain and pleasure.

Not that she could tell the difference.

* * *

She gasped.

A mild, dull pain in her side snapped her to attention. She drew her arms and legs together, feeling her heart pounding in her chest. Feeling a cold wood floor underneath her. Feeling the thin sheen of sweat over her skin, soft cotton and a thick comforter. She patted herself all over, no pain, no wounds, aside from what was likely to be a few bruises when she fell. Disentangling herself to her knees, she caught the green-blue seven-segment LEDs of her alarm clock.

Two Thirty-Seven.

She shakily got to her feet and padded her bare feet across the room, walking into her dresser before she managed to find the light switch. She bit her lip and shrugged, and, squinting, flicked the switch. The bright light made her squint harder.

She collapsed back on the bed, feeling her heart pound in her chest. As her eyes adjusted to the light and her heartrate slowed down a little more, she sighed. After what seemed like an eternity, after the light stopped stabbing her eyes, she sat up. Then stood up.

She wasn’t going to get back to sleep tonight, never did when she had one of _those_ dreams.

It was intermittent. First time she had one of those dreams was in the hospital, after… the first time she met him. A few years later, on a lark she actually requested what records hadn’t ended up destroyed—apparently her “sadomasochistic sexual delusions” had netted her a prescription of haloperidol, which she had assiduously taken.

At least, those records signed by Doctor Channard said she was taking her antipsychotics.

And after _that_ stay in the hospital, and an abrupt discharge, she did her best to never mention those dreams again. When she heard on the news about those _bizarre_ murders centering around a night club called the boiler Room, she ignored it. There was never any reason for her to dig any deeper.

After all, looking into that might give her nightmares.

They came anyways, they always did.

She just ignored it, tried to do the normal thing. Get married, live a normal, quiet, boring life. A safe life, a comfortable one with a decent husband. Only occasionally dig into obscure myths and demonology—the internet made that so much easier to get sucked into the research. But she was just a normal woman with some odd internet interests. A normal woman with a normal husband. One who didn’t mind her nightmares, one she could even talk about things with, one she trusted to not think her insane for mentioning that puzzle box.

Well, he believed she wasn’t lying, at least. Believed her about the box, and then…

“We gotta stop running into each other like this.” She muttered at her reflection the mirror on the dresser, before bursting into laughter.

How had she done it?

In almost all of the things she’d managed to cobble together, nobody got out, nobody managed to live through opening the box. One-hundred percent mortality rate. The Lament Configuration getting into peoples hands was apparently shockingly common, with repeated incidents over the years—although given how many times it had crossed _her_ path, maybe it shouldn’t have been so shocking.

As far as she could tell, she was the only one who’d ever survived multiple run-ins with that box.

Of course, tracing the history of a demonic puzzle box through google and the occasional books on the topic left her wondering how much was real and how much was just her going crazy with pattern recognition.

Yeah, she was not getting back to bed any time soon.

She needed to distract herself.

And… deal with some lingering effects of the nightmare.

She walked out of her bedroom, leaving a trail of her pajamas on the floor as she got to the bathroom. Turned on the shower. The stream of water was shockingly cold, but quickly warmed to something nearly uncomfortably hot.

Her hand drifted between her legs. She always woke up _slick_ from the nightmare. For a long time, did her best to ignore it. Because how fucked up was _that_? Waking up, hot and bothered dreaming of butchery at _his_ hands. But as of late, she’d given up being disgusted at herself over her dreams, which had steadily become clearer, longer. After all, disgust with herself had caused all sorts of problems.

Maybe it was genetic? Being fucked in the head? Uncle Frank wanted the box, and got more than he could handle. And her?

Fingers traced some scars on her legs—she’d had phases of self harm. That was well behind her now. Occasionally if she got the urge… she’d looked up some clubs. Discrete, allegedly safe. Let a professional do it to her; leave welts and bruises and the rare scar.

Christ, when did she _want_ to get hurt?

Was it want? She’d had too many run-ins with the box, with Hell for it to be a coincidence. She’d come out in one piece, over and over, but how much longer could that continue? Sooner or later, her luck would run out.

Pain was inevitable. How she’d react to it…

She bit her lip until she tasted metal on her tongue, returning her hand to the space between her legs. She pushed in leaning against the wall for support. She turned the water on higher—almost painfully hot. Her fingers stroked, trying to find _that_ place that _he_ always found in her dream. She groped her breasts with her free hand; roughly, nails digging into skin.

And the dirty thoughts she was thinking to get herself off… normal scenarios didn’t really do it for her any more. 

She stroked and rubbed and thought of being _hurt_. She used to try to avoid thinking about the dream itself during these sessions. Now she was clawing at her skin, grinding the nails of her left toes against the top of her right, pinching herself hard. Doing this herself was tricky—she still had trouble hurting herself.

She managed to hit the right spot, legs buckling on the wet porcelain and she ended up in a heap on the floor of the tub, hot water streaming over her. Painfully hot. She reared up to turn it off, then collapsed back on the floor, continuing to finger herself. The inside of her lip hurt, and now she regretted the thin red lines she clawed into her belly.

She didn’t like pain.

But somehow, deep down she wanted it.

Suddenly, it seemed like a huge mistake, this whole thing. She should’ve made a cup of tea, lay down in bed, eyes shut, trying to ignore things. Tell herself that there ruminating over Hell and the box and him was unhealthy, not normal. Not that she had been anywhere near normal after getting glimpses of Hell. But the normal thing would be doing her best to forget this, to live her life.

Instead she was finger fucking herself to the thought of eternal damnation. Of herself mutilated and broken and ruined and in agony. And of _him_. She shuddered as she remembered a new detail from her dream, of him close enough that the pins in his head were poking into _her_ skin, him growling as he made her scream.

“Sooner or later, this won’t be a dream any more, Kirsty.” 

Eventually, she did manage to drag herself out of the shower, loosely wrapped up in a towel. It hadn’t quite put her mind at ease—she was a mess of that old disgust at herself and pure satisfaction. She did burn up some of that nervous energy that was keeping her awake, but she didn’t go back to her bedroom, simply walking to the den and flopping on the couch. 

Even in the dark room, she spotted the package, laying on the coffee table. She hadn’t brought it in, and it hadn’t been there when she went to bed the previous night.

That explained the dream.

She didn’t need to turn on the lights to imagine the sender’s address—a plain box wrapped in musty paper. From exotic locales—Bombay, Instanbul (or Constantinople, once), Damascus. Once from Hackensack, New Jersey. She’d gotten the package a few times; she never managed to figure out a pattern to it. One day she got it on Uncle Frank’s birthday, two years later, on her own. Armistice day for World War I.

She long ago stopped wondering who the sender was—trying to track it down led to a lot of blank stares at the post office and fruitless googling. Maybe other people, who wanted to get rid of the thing, just had an inkling she’d want it. Maybe _He_ sent it. Didn’t matter. She’d get the box, ignore it, put it someplace she couldn’t get to it. Later, when her resolve broke down, and she had to _look_ at the thing, she’d find it was gone.

Paper tore and she opened the wooden lid of the package. Straw or some other packing material surrounded something black, shiny even in the darkness. A complicated puzzle made of dark wood. A puzzle. 

She reached for it, then paused. Thought better of it.

Was this… normal? Of course not, demon boxes weren’t. Hell, normal for the box apparently was a gory death and eternity in Hell. But people who survived—did anyone else who managed to get away from the Cenobites have to deal with the box coming back? Everyone she knew who called them down, Channard, Frank, _sought_ the box.

To her it was just a random thing she grabbed in a darkened attic as she frantically tried to get away from a skinless monster.

And it kept crossing her path.

Was she special? There had to be a _reason_ she kept finding herself involved with the box. But… the reason could simply be pure fucking sadism on their part. Or… she would always break down, promise herself she just wanted to make sure it was there when it wasn’t. Was the reason that she… wanted it?

She pulled her hand back when she felt the cold surface of the box, subconsciously touching it.

She laid on the couch, facing away from the coffee table, and the box. She put her hands underneath her head, resting on the cushion, and tried to sleep.

Hopefully she wouldn’t dream this time…

Even if part of her looked forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Jesus Wept_.
> 
> More seriously, this story almost wrote itself when I reread your prompts--going far beyond what I'd normally do to a character, even if I did a dream fakeout. I was having trouble with writer's block on you requests, then saw you had no DNWs for this fandom, and had an idea. 
> 
> So... sorry.


End file.
